Art Mostly

I asked Joanna to make an animal out of playdoh, and this is what she came up with!  I love it.  :)

She stresses when I ask her to do art things just out of nowhere.  She’s not really a make-it-up-out-of-nowhere girl.

This one, on the other hand, is always drawing and coloring something, with no stress at all.  :)

She made this alligator for James

She’s figuring out faces these days.  She’s doing eyelashes, nostrils, and teeth!  The cumulative effect is a little… tribal, but I love how she just teaches herself to do all this!

And this one isn’t about art; it’s just cute.  :)

Although I can’t get over the dark circles under her eyes – the girl needs more sleep!

James is cute, and artwork, and squash, and why I shouldn’t take pictures of sleeping babies with the big camera

The kids were playing with blocks this morning.  I think James is the first of my three that sat and enjoyed stacking blocks again and again.

I deeply love this one:

James came into the kitchen saying “my stroller.”  I said, “Do you have a baby in that stroller?”

He said “No.  Car stroller.”

And sure enough he did.

Laura was having a tired/hungry moment, and she fell asleep eating.  I couldn’t help snapping this picture, but the sound of the shutter startled her awake.  Clearly it didn’t take much, and she probably would have woken up in a second anyway.

Joanna drew this picture a week or so ago, and she did some writing on it.  Basically it says “I went horseback riding.”  And you can see some of the letters that are actually in that sentence – I think she was sounding it out!  She has the horses labeled at the bottom with an “L” for Labamba and a “P” for Patches.  I love it!

I love all the drawing that the girls are doing lately, but the papers are kind of taking over the world.  I decided I would start trimming them and putting them together in a book so they’d be fun to flip through.  I pulled down all the school work and artwork that I had hanging around and sorted it by kiddo.  I pretty much keep every single thing that comes home from school/church/nursery for the whole year and then I go through it to save the very favorites.  But this is the first time Joanna especially has been drawing so much at home, and I want to catalogue it as it comes. 

I trimmed the drawings to squares because squares make me happy and mounted them on cardstock that was slightly larger.  I also attached a label with a description told to me by the artist as well as her name and the approximate date.

I’ll add more on the back as they come in.  I think I will set up a little basket or drawer or something with the glue, labels, and a pen so I will keep up with this little endeavor.  The girls and I love the book!

And look what I found in the “garden” while I was pulling clothes off the line?!!  It’s like a real vegetable!!!!!!

This morning we had a gorgeous walk to school.  The kids all wore their jean jackets.  I didn’t wear a jacket, but it felt glorious to be just a little chilly on the walk.  And I wasn’t drenched when we got back home.

I managed to get some laundry done today but not so much folded.  Hopefully I’ll get a burst of energy to do that tonight.  Or… not.  :)

I actually drove to pick up Joanna this afternoon, and I don’t have a good excuse as to why.  I do have a bad excuse though.  :)  I really just wanted a Dr. Pepper, and I decided everyone would benefit from me having one.  (I was a little grumpy and tired.)  The trouble was that it was too close to pick up time to go get one and then walk to school.  So I put the four littles in the car and called the school to tell them I’d be picking up Joanna in the car.  She was pretty excited, and it was nice to get to say hi to Joanna’s teacher, who does back door dismissal.  And the Dr. Pepper was really good.

The three “big” kids enjoyed playing outside after their rest time today.  It was so lovely that they didn’t come in just drenched in sweat!  They were plenty dirty though.  The neighbor kids even came over to our backyard and played for awhile.  Yay for bearable weather!!

Got Lemons? Just Applique!

I had a bit of a problem, and it started last week.  It was time for me to send in a white T-shirt for each of the girls so they could make their rodeo shirts for school.  The morning they were supposed to bring them in (ahem), I realized the stash of t-shirts I thought I had were not there.  I did have one lonely 4T t-shirt, and a sad, awfully small-looking 4T long-sleeved shirt.  I’m not really sure if I put any thought into who got what shirt, but Joanna ended up with the long-sleeved one, which is ridiculously too small for her.  It came home today, and she’s supposed to wear it tomorrow!

So I did some crafting during nap time.

The shirt:

And a new size 5 shirt Gran just happened to order for her last week:

I cut the good stuff off the old shirt:

And used my rolling blade thingy and a yard stick to make it a pretty square

I decided since it was going to obvious what I’d done, I might as well make the most of it and use red thread to applique it.

I’m actually pleasantly surprised how cute it looks!

At first when I told Joanna what I was going to do, she was sad.  She is soooooo much like me and worries about these kinds of things.  But when I showed her the shirt all pinned and ready to be sewn, she thought it was okay!

And I’m very excited that I should be able to just snip the threads and the v-neck shirt will be all plain again.  We have 5 of these shirts, and she’s never worn them more than rodeo day.  They aren’t really our style.  :)

Natalie’s Masterpiece

It’s not unusual for Natalie to do some pretty scribbling, especially when there are markers involved, but this is the first time she drew a thing.  One morning last week she showed Matt her cockroach.  Can you see it?

Here it is if you need a little help:

I’m pretty sure that she drew it, then realized that it looked like a cockroach.  And it does!  A body, two antennae, six or so legs.  When I heard her telling Matt about it (I was semi comatose on the couch), I assumed it was a black splotch or something like that.  I’m so amazed at my budding artist.  :)

Craft Time

This evening I felt inspired to do a little craft with the girls.  So I cut up a bunch of tissue paper, poured a little Mod Podge, and let them go after it!

Prepping their paper with a little watered down Mod Podge:

Natalie LOVED “painting” and would throw a fit if I tried to get her to stop!

Such concentration!

 

I think this would have kept them busy (and very messy) for a LONG TIME!  I’ll have to pull it back out after rest time this week and see if it helps with the grumpies.  They threw a fit when it was time to stop (they were tired!), so I may be asking for trouble if we don’t do it first thing in the morning. :)